Do Author Bios Ever Make You Want to Read a Book?

I recently got a publicity email from Clean Teen Reads that caught my attention. First off, I have to mention that the cover of one of the books featured was the first thing that caught my eye. I get promo emails from publishers all the time, and I often just kind of skim through them and hit Delete – there has to be something compelling to make me take a closer look, and I will fully admit that a pretty cover is often that “thing” that does the trick. What can I say, I totally judge a book by its cover!

Anyway, in this particular instance, I was drawn in enough to read the author bio. And something about this bio just made me HAVE to read this book …

ABOUT JENNIFER DERRICK:

Jennifer Derrick became a writer at the age of six when her parents bought her a child’s typewriter for Christmas and agreed to pay her a penny per page for any stories she churned out. When she got older, Jennifer realized that she needed to make (much) more money from her writing so she first turned to the corporate world (where she learned that she is spectacularly unsuited to cubicle life) and ultimately to freelancing where she now writes everything from technical manuals to articles on personal finance and European-style board games. Her writing career came full circle when Clean Teen Publishing published Broken Fate, her first novel. By her calculations, her parents owe her about $3.00 for the book.

She lives in North Carolina and, when not writing, can often be found reading anything she can get her hands on, playing board games, watching sports, camping, running marathons, and playing with her dog

Author Links:

Something about this cute story about Jennifer’s parents offering to pay her for her stories captured my attention and tickled my imagination. I went back and more carefully read about her book (Broken Fate). And I bought it.

Now, of course, if the book itself hadn’t sounded good to me, I wouldn’t have picked it up, but Jennifer’s author bio was a HUGE influence on me buying the book. I think, in my mind, if an author can manage to engage and intrigue me in just a short description of herself, how much better would a whole book be?! I suppose I’ve yet to prove whether or not this theory is true – I’ll let you know when I’ve read it!

This isn’t the first time that an author bio has utterly entranced me – I’ve posted the “long” bio for Jodi Meadows because I love it so much (and she mentions ferrets! I love ferrets!). And I know there have been others that I’ve enjoyed. My husband isn’t interested in books and only semi-skims my reviews, but he tells me he likes to read the author bios! (Yeah he’s kooky like that.) But this is the first time I can remember deciding to buy a book based mostly (at least initially) on an author blurb.

Have you ever loved an author bio so much it made you decide to buy (or at least read) a book? Any author bios you love? Tell me about them in the comments. I want to know!

26 Responses to “Do Author Bios Ever Make You Want to Read a Book?”

I have to admit that I rarely read author blurbs, even when I love an author and buy their books. Having said that I can completely understand something about the author blurb making you want to read a book 🙂

I like to read author blurbs, but I have to admit, that I tend to only do so after I’ve read a book (if it’s an e-books) or when I already own the book (if it’s a physical book). I suppose I read them every now and then when I’m looking up books but I’ve never had one push me to read a story before. I like that this one did though. It’s a cute bio.

I’m tickled to death that you wrote this post about me! When I wrote my bio, I thought about being all serious and stuffy and more “author-like” but then I thought, “The heck with it. I’m a bit of an oddball so let’s go with my oddball story.” Who knew people would like it? Thank you!

YES! I was contemplating reading Chelsea Fine’s books, so I was stumbling around her website and ended up reading her PR bio. And I was like SOLD lol! I ended up falling in love with every single one of her books that I have read so far. Her bio FYI is –

Chelsea lives in Phoenix, Arizona where she spends most of her time writing stories, painting murals, and avoiding housework at all costs. She’s ridiculously bad at doing dishes and claims to be allergic to laundry. Her obsessions include: superheroes, coffee, sleeping-in, and crazy socks. She lives with her husband and two children, who graciously tolerate her inability to resist teenage drama on TV and her complete lack of skill in the kitchen.

It made me smile so much and I just knew that her books would be a good fit for me. So I completely get where you are coming from!

Right?! Her bio is SO much fun! Just like her writing. She is hilarious and I love it! I adore The Archers of Avalon Series – the 1st book is Anew. It’s Paranormal and while it contains a trope I usually loathe, it worked perfectly. 😉 Hope you enjoy!

I am ashamed to say I don’t spend to much reading authors bios. Not sure why. Their pictures have made me want to check out their books though. If it shows their personality and how unique they are I want to see what they are all about in their writing. Maybe I should spend more time reading bios. This one was super adorable. great post.

Lol, this has never happened to me before, since I usually don’t read author bios before reading the book. Now, when I have it, I love reading everything, right down to reviews by other people in the book, acknowledgements, and yes the bio.

That said, I do like how the bio both contains the important things that usually all bios have, but also the cute story is woven in and the results are pretty original when you think about it.

Admittedly, I don’t read author bios unless I’ve finished their book and I just have to read about the author because it was so good. I don’t think an author bio has ever influenced me to read a book before, but hearing that you experienced such a thing is really interesting! Maybe someday I’ll come across a fun/interesting/good bio too. 🙂

This makes me think that I should read author bios. I usually don’t. Sometimes I skim them to find out an author’s nationality because I track that for my reading statistics, but if Goodreads has that info, I don’t look at the bio in the book.

To tell you the truth, I rarely read author bios. I do *sometimes*, but definitely not for every author. And half the time I don’t read it until after I finish the book. It’s kind of like, “Oh, that book was good, I’m curious to know more about the author now.” I feel like I really only read bios before reading books if I can’t find enough information about the book itself or am super undecided about whether to read it. But that’s usually so I can maybe get a little more of a feel for type of book they’d write. I think maybe once or twice I may have come across a bio that was in an email or part of a giveaway or something (as in, I didn’t seek it out, it was just there) that cracked me up, and I put one of their books on my TBR because I figured if they can make me laugh, we must have similar humor and their book will be funny too. But aside from those one or two times, bios don’t make a difference for me.

I don’t read author bios that often. That being said, after reading Jennifer Derrick’s bio, I clicked on over to goodreads to learn about her book, Broken Fate, and I must admit, it sounds pretty intriguing. Maybe I should read author bios more often… (Actually now that I think about it, I read Gail Carriger’s bio and found myself so enamored the I just knew I had to get my hands on her books).

I love reading author bios because it makes me feel closer to an author… that being said, I can’t remember any of them, but I do read!

I can’t remember if a bio made me read or even click to find out more about the books… mostly because I read author bios to books I alreasy love and maybe because I never really thought about it as much. 😁

I’m not sure about this one. Most times I skip over the author bio so then I would say no – they don’t really make me want to read the book. But then sometimes I get the feeling that I want to read it, and if it’s written in a certain style it makes me think that the book must be pretty entertaining and cool too, which makes me more partial when considering it… But most times I skip over it >>

Connect with Me!

Looking for a list of 2018 Reading/Blogging Challenges? Look no further!

November Wrap-Up Round-Up Giveaway

About Me

I'm a book-loving homeschooling mom of three crazy kiddos who loves to blog about her favorite reads! My blog is called Feed Your Fiction Addiction for a reason - some days I think I might need an intervention!